Journalist, critic of U.S. Ukraine policy, pulled off plane, U.S. seizes his passport
Judge Napolitano of Judging Freedom was also escorted off the plane according to some reports.
https://www.rt.com/news/598711-us-seizes-scott-ritters-passport/, 3June 24
The RT contributor was stopped from visiting Russia
The US State Department has seized the passport of former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, he told RT on Monday.
Ritter was on his way to Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) when he was pulled off the plane and had his documents confiscated.
“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me,” Ritter told RT. “They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.”
“Was this done in accordance with the First Amendment, or the Fourth,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, commenting on the news. The first amendment to the US constitution protects freedom of speech, press and assembly, while the fourth bars the government from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, who later served as the US and UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He is also a RT contributor, writing about international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.
He most recently visited Russia in January, spending time in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg, among other places.
The most recent post on Ritter’s Telegram channel put the Clooney Foundation for Justice on notice for its alleged crusade against “Russian propagandists.”
“Here I am. In your face. If telling the truth about Russia makes me a propagandist in your book, then I accept the title,” he wrote. “Bring it on. I’ll school you on the First Amendment.”
“You have zero concept of what free speech is. Try and arrest me and you’ll find out. In spades. It’s war,” he added.
Senior U.S. Diplomats, Journalists, Academics and Secretaries of Defense Say: the U.S. Provoked Russia in Ukraine
Progressive Memes, by Donald A. Smith, PhD 3 June 24
It took some years for Americans to realize they’d been lied to about the war in Vietnam. Thanks to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and thanks to the antiwar movement, Americans eventually learned about the injustices and failures of that war.
Likewise, it took several years after the starts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Americans to realize they’d been lied to about those wars as well.
Americans are just now starting to realize that they’ve been lied to about the war in Ukraine. (The propaganda effort has been quite effective, with the New York Times, in particular, acting as a mouthpiece for the government’s position.) More and more mainstream publications are exposing the lies, and a majority of Americans now oppose further arming of Ukraine.
This essay is a summary of what the U.S. government has been hiding about the war in Ukraine, with links to sources for further information.
According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, U.S. military actions since 9/11 directly killed over 900,000 people, with an additional 3.5 million people dying from indirect effects. The wars cost Americans at least $8 trillion and displaced over 38 million people from their homes. The U.S. spends over a trillion dollars a year on its military, if you count all expenditures.
If we go back to the 1960s, the number killed by U.S. wars includes the several million killed in the Vietnam war, the approximately 1 million killed by U.S. support for Indonesian military’s attacks on left wing groups, and the hundreds of thousands, at least, killed in proxy wars and government overthrows in Latin America.
The wars, overthrows, and associated sanctions caused mass migrations worldwide — particularly in Europe and at the southern U.S. border — and destabilized politics. Yet almost nobody (except for whistleblowers) was held accountable for these disasters; indeed, many of the same people are in Congress or work for the government or the weapons industry.
Moreover, the U.S. government lied about almost all the wars — in particular, about the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but also about the war in Yugoslovia, as documented in Harper’s Magazine and here. (In short, the Kosovo Liberation Army that the U.S. supported was, basically, a terrorist organization funded by the CIA, and U.S. propaganda greatly overstated the nobility of the U.S. intervention.)
So, it should come as no surprise that our government is lying now about the war in Ukraine. Specifically, claims by President Biden and others that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked” are greatly exaggerated.
Read what these diplomats, secretaries of Defense, journalists, academics, and politicians have to say:
Former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock says in Ukraine: Tragedy of a Nation Divided:
“Interference by the United States and its NATO allies in Ukraine’s civil struggle has exacerbated the crisis within Ukraine, undermined the possibility of bringing the two easternmost provinces back under Kyiv’s control, and raised the specter of possible conflict between nuclear-armed powers. Furthermore, in denying that Russia has a ‘right’ to oppose extension of a hostile military alliance to its national borders, the United States ignores its own history of declaring and enforcing for two centuries a sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere.”
Diplomat and historian George Kennan, quoted in Thomas Friedman’s This Is Putin’s War. But America and NATO Aren’t Innocent Bystanders, discussing NATO expansion:
“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.”
William J. Perry, Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton, wrote How the US Lost Russia – and How We Can Restore Relations in Sept. of 2022:
“Many have pointed to the expansion of NATO in the mid-1990s as a critical provocation. At the time, I opposed that expansion, in part for fear of the effect on Russian-U.S. relations….Still, the first step in finding a solution [to the war in Ukraine] is acknowledging the problem and recognizing that our actions have contributed to that hostility.”
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, in We Always Knew the Dangers of NATO Expansion:
“[T]rying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching, … recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.”
Ambassador Michael Gfoeller and David H. Rundell: in Newsweek‘s Lessons From the US Civil War Show Why Ukraine Can’t Win:
“Before the war, far right Ukrainian nationalist groups like the Azov Brigade were soundly condemned by the US Congress. Kiev’s determined campaign against the Russian language is analogous to the Canadian government trying to ban French in Quebec. Ukrainian shells have killed hundreds of civilians in the Donbas and there are emerging reports of Ukrainian war crimes. The truly moral course of action would be to end this war with negotiations rather than prolong the suffering of the Ukrainian people in a conflict they are unlikely to win without risking American lives.”
Christopher Caldwell: in the New York Times‘ The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the US Deserves Much of the Blame:
“In 2014 the United States backed an uprising – in its final stages a violent uprising – against the legitimately elected Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych, which was pro-Russian.”
Chas W. Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a Lifetime Director of the Atlantic Council, says in The Many Lessons of the War in Ukraine: “Less than a day after the US-engineered coup that installed an anti-Russian regime in Kyiv in 2014, Washington formally recognized the new regime… The United States and NATO began a multi-billion-dollar effort to reorganize, retrain, and re-equip Kyiv’s armed forces. The avowed purpose was to enable Kyiv to reconquer the Donbas and eventually Crimea…. Crimea was Russian-speaking and had several times voted not to be part of Ukraine.” And: “From 2014 to 2022, the civil war in Donbas took nearly 15,000 lives.” Freeman says that the U.S. undermined several possible peace deals. “Ukraine is being eviscerated on the altar of Russophobia” but Russia has not, after all, been weakened. See this.
William J. Burns, then Ambassador to Russia, current director of the CIA, wrote in a 2008 cable, as revealed by Wikileaks:
Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains “an emotional and neuralgic” issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.
MFA: NATO Enlargement “Potential Military Threat to Russia”
Thomas Friedman: in the New York Times‘ This Is Putin’s War. But America and NATO Aren’t Innocent Bystanders:
“The mystery was why the US – which throughout the Cold War dreamed that Russia might one day have a democratic revolution and a leader who, however haltingly, would try to make Russia into a democracy and join the West – would choose to quickly push NATO into Russia’s face when it was weak. A very small group of officials and policy wonks at that time, myself included, asked that same question, but we were drowned out.”America and NATO Aren’t Innocent Bystanders [from the title]
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy said in an interview in 2014:
“With respect to Ukraine, we have not sat on the sidelines. We have been very much involved. Members of the Senate have been there, members of the State Department who have been on the square …. I really think that the clear position of the United States has been in part what has helped lead to this change in regime…. I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions, that forced, in part, Yanukovich from office.”
Henry Kissinger in an interview with The Wall Street Journal:
“We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.”
Neoconservative Robert Kagan writes in an otherwise hawkish Foreign Affairs essay from May, 2022, The Price of Hegemony: Can America Learn to Use its Power?:
“Although it is obscene to blame the United States for Putin’ inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading. …. the invasion of Ukraine is taking place in a historical and geopolitical context in which the United States has played and still plays the principal role, and Americans must grapple with this fact.”
Fiona Hill, former official at the U.S. National Security Council during the administration of George W. Bush, in the New York Times’ Putin has the U.S. right where he wants it:
“At the time, I was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, part of a team briefing Mr. Bush. We warned him that Mr. Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action. But ultimately, our warnings weren’t heeded.”
Pope Francis in Yahoo News’ Pope Francis Says NATO Started War in Ukraine by “Barking at Putin’s Door”:
The real “scandal” of Putin’s war is NATO “barking at Putin’s door.”
James W. Carden, journalist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State, in Simone Weil Center’s America’ Crisis of Reality and Realism: A Symposium (Part I):
“The de facto alliance of Ukrainian westernizing liberals and the fascist Ukrainian far-Right which together drove the so-called Revolution of Dignity in 2013-14 ignored their obligation to respect the democratic process.”
John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago
“The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to be wrecked.” (2015)
Former Ambassador Thomas Graham, who served under six U.S. presidents and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in Was the Collapse of US-Russia Relations Inevitable?: “US hubris and Russian paranoia undermined partnership.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a weakened Russia sought closer ties to the West and even helped George W. Bush fight the war on terror. But instead of helping Russia fight Chechen rebels, which Russia considered to be terrorists, the U.S. lent support to those rebels. The U.S. pressed its advantage, aggressively expanding NATO, instigating regime change operations in countries friendly to Russia, and undermining Russian energy exports.
Finally, in light of the growing problems with Russia in the former Soviet bloc, the US push in 2008 to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was ill-advised at best. It tied together the two strands of the Bush administration’s hedging policy—NATO expansion and Eurasian geopolitical pluralism—in a way guaranteed to provoke a powerful Russian backlash. Key allies, notably France and Germany, were adamantly opposed. Bush’s own ambassador in Moscow warned that extending an invitation to Ukraine would cross the “brightest of red lines” and elicit sharp condemnation across the political spectrum.
NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, in Opening remarks at the joint meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE):
Putin “went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”
Stephen M. Walt, professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, in an essay in Foreign Policy:
“This war would have been far less likely if the United States had adopted a strategy of foreign-policy restraint…. The Biden Administration and its predecessors are far from blameless.”
Michael Brenner, professor at University of Pittsburgh, in How to Think about the Ukraine War after 18 Months:
“[T]he provocations as you enumerated them were very great. And whether there was any alternative for Russia other than this recourse to a military solution, is a difficult question.”
Richard Sakwa, Professor at Univ. of Kent and author of multiple books on Russia and Ukraine in Book Talk: The Lost Peace:
“The argument that the invasion was unprovoked is completely false.”
“The global north, once again, it’s got this obsession, obsessive tendency to fall into war, endlessly. So the global north clearly is shooting itself in the foot. Blowback is going to be massive.”
Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute in The US and NATO Helped Trigger the Ukraine War. It’s Not ‘Siding With Putin’ to Admit It:
“One can readily imagine how Americans would react if Russia, China, India, or another peer competitor admitted countries from Central America and the Caribbean to a security alliance that it led – and then sought to add Canada as an official or de facto military ally. It is highly probable that the United States would have responded by going to war years ago. Yet even though Ukraine has an importance to Russia comparable to Canada’s importance to the United States, our leaders expected Moscow to respond passively to the growing encroachment.They have been proven disastrously wrong, and thanks to their ineptitude, the world is now a far more dangerous place.”
Alfred de Zayas, a former senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, says in The Ukraine War in the Light of the UN Charter:
“The war in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022, but already in February 2014. The civilian population of the Donbas has endured continued shelling from Ukrainian forces since 2014, notwithstanding the Minsk Agreements. These attacks on Lugansk and Donetsk significantly increased in January-February 2022, as reported by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine.”
George Beebe, former director of the CIA’s Russia analysis group and former advisor to Dick Cheney, writes in When does NATO actually promote US interests?:
“NATO’s eastward expansion exacerbated the threat of Russian aggression that the alliance was originally intended to prevent. …. While not the sole cause of Medvedev’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the desire to block a Western military presence in these key states was a fundamental Kremlin motivation.”
Beebe said that NATO was unwilling to “respect Russia’s concerns.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
………………………………………………………….For copious detail about U.S. provocations see How the U.S. provoked Russia in Ukraine: A Compendium.
The propagandists who continue to push for arming Ukraine say that the people of Ukraine were eager to join the West and that the Maidan Revolution was a grassroots expression of pro-Western sentiment. Instead, there is evidence that the revolution was largely the creation of U.S. regime change meddling, aided by the so-called National Endowment for Democracy (a CIA offshoot); see the Compendium above for documentation. Certainly, most of the people in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea did not want closer ties with the West. (Carnegie Endowment for Peace and Foreign Affairs documented that a majority of the people of Crimea welcomed Russia’s annexation of their territory in 2014: Denis Volkov and Andrei Kolesnikov’s My Country, Right or Wrong: Russian Public Opinion on Ukraine (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 7, 2022); John O’Loughlin, Gerad Toal and Kristin M. Bakke’s To Russia With Love: A Majority of Crimeans are Still Glad for Their Annexation (Foreign Affairs, April 3, 2020).) Likewise, in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Syria, Libya, Chechnya and elsewhere, the U.S. instigated military and interference operations to bring down pro-Russian governments.
So, the U.S. intervened to aid “liberation” movements against Russian allies in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria — allying with Muslim extremists to do so — but the U.S. condemns Russia for intervening to aid Russian-speaking people along Russia’s own borders, in a conflict against Nazi militias supported by the U.S. and driven by aggressive NATO expansion.
Moreover, the U.S. occupies one third of the sovereign nation of Syria, with help from its proxy army, the Syrian Defense Forces. In fact, the U.S. allied with al Qaeda and other extremist groups in Syria, as reported here, here and here.
Likewise, U.S. troops remain in Iraq, despite the opposition of the Iraqi government. So, it’s quite hypocritical for the U.S. to reject a ceasefire which allows Russia to occupy Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine which voted overwhelmingly for closer ties with Russia.
These facts and opinions do not justify Russia’s brutal invasion, but they certainly give the lie to statements by President Biden and others that the invasion was “unprovoked.” Even the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014 was provoked: it occurred after, and partially in response to, the U.S.-backed overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Ukraine.
And the facts expose amazing hyprocrisy. The U.S. launched numerous unjustified wars and proxy wars; surrounded Russia and China with pro-US allies and military bases (about 800 worldwide); exited multiple arms treaties; and increased military spending to about $1 trillion a year despite $34 trillion in debt and dire domestic needs. Yet we accuse Russia and China of being the aggressors.
Both sides can be at fault in a conflict. The U.S. too has blood on its hands.
Finally, the facts are strong reasons why the U.S. should not be arming Ukraine to the teeth, pushing it to fight to the last Ukrainian and risking a nuclear war. Instead, it should push for a negotiated end to the war.
https://progressivememes.org/senior-US-diplomats-academics-journalists-and-secretaries-of-defense-say-the-US-provoked-Russia-in-Ukraine.html
How Nato seduced the European Left. The anti-war movement has fallen for a progressive circus.
UnHerd, Lily Lynch, MAY 16, 2023
In January 2018, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg held an unprecedented press conference with Angelina Jolie. While InStyle reported that Jolie “was dressed in a black off-the-shoulder sheath dress, a matching capelet and classic pumps (also black)”, there was a deeper purpose to this meeting: sexual violence in war. The pair had just co-authored a piece for the Guardian entitled “Why NATO must defend women’s rights”. The timing was significant. At the height of the #MeToo movement, the most powerful military alliance in the world had become a feminist ally. “Ending gender-based violence is a vital issue of peace and security as well as of social justice,” they wrote. “NATO can be a leader in this effort.”
This was a new and progressive face for Nato, the same one it has since used to seduce much of the European Left. Previously, in the Nordic countries, Atlanticists have had to sell war and militarism to largely pacifist publics. This was achieved in part by presenting Nato not as a rapacious, pro-war military alliance, but as an enlightened, “progressive” peace alliance. As Timothy Garton Ash effused in the Guardian in 2002, “NATO has become a European peace movement” where one could watch “John Lennon meet George Bush”. Today, by contrast, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland abandoned their long-standing traditions of neutrality and opted for membership. Nato is portrayed as a military alliance — and Ukraine a war — that even former pacifists can get behind. All its proponents seem to be singing is “Give War a Chance”.
The Jolie campaign marked a dramatic turn in what Katharine A.M. Wright and Annika Bergman Rosamond call “Nato’s strategic narrative” in several ways. First, the alliance embraced celebrity star power for the first time, imbuing its unremarkable brand with elite glamour and beauty. Jolie’s star power meant that the alluring images of the event reached apolitical audiences with little knowledge of Nato. Second, the partnership seemed to usher in an era in which women’s rights, gendered violence and feminism would assume a more prominent role in Nato rhetoric. Since then, and especially in the past 12 months, telegenic female leaders such as the Finnish Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, have increasingly served as the spokespersons of enlightened militarism in Europe. The alliance has also intensified its engagement with popular culture, new technologies, and youth influencers.
Of course, Nato has always been PR-conscious, and has long engaged culture, entertainment, and the arts. Who could forget the 1999 album Distant Early Warning from electronic duo Icebreaker International, recorded with funding from the defunct “NATOarts” and inspired by the radar stations along Alaska and Canada’s northern periphery built to alert Nato of an incoming Soviet nuclear strike? Or the 2007 feature film HQ, produced by Nato’s public diplomacy division, which depicts life inside the alliance and a mock diplomatic response to a crisis in the fictional state of Seismania? Just about everyone it turns out. But what makes Nato’s more recent strategic turn so effective is that it has successfully echoed candidate countries’ progressive local traditions and identities.
No political party in Europe better exemplifies the shift from militant pacifism to ardent pro-war Atlanticism than the German Greens. Most of the original Greens had been radicals during the student protests of 1968; many had demonstrated against American wars. The early Greens advocated for West Germany’s withdrawal from Nato. But as the founding members entered middle age, fissures began to appear in the party that would one day tear it apart. Two camps began to coalesce: the “Realos” were the moderate Greens, politically pragmatists. The “Fundis” were the radical, uncompromising camp; they wanted the party to remain faithful to its fundamental values no matter what.
…………………………………………………………………………………. Earlier this year, Germany’s Federal Foreign Office also rolled out a new “Feminist Foreign Policy”, the latest of several European foreign ministries to have done so. This new orientation, also adopted by France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Spain, paints cosmopolitan militarism with a faux-radical feminist gloss, opening the domain of war and security to women’s rights activists. No-nonsense feminist leaders are depicted as the ideal foil to authoritarian “strongmen”.
Sweden was the first country to adopt such a policy in 2014, permitting it to project its longstanding state feminism abroad, and to assume a new moral posture in the international arena. Domestically, there were positive Atlanticist stories in women’s magazines. In the “Mama” section of the Swedish newspaper Expressen, targeted at female readers, one interview with Angelina Jolie emphasised that Nato can protect women from sexual violence in war. Jolie also stressed that there is little difference between humanitarian aid workers and Nato soldiers, as they “are striving towards the same goal: peace”.
…………………….. Nato’s “Protect the Future” campaign. This year it included a graphic novel competition for young artists. The alliance also courted dozens of influencers with large followings on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, and brought them out to the headquarters in Brussels. Other influencers were dispatched to last year’s Nato Summit in Madrid, where they were asked to create content for their audiences.
The European Left has been utterly captivated by this show. Following the path taken by the German Greens, major Left-wing parties have abandoned military neutrality and opposition to war and now champion Nato. It is a stunning reversal. During the Cold War, the European Left organised mass protests attended by millions against US-led militarism and Nato’s deployment of Pershing-II and cruise missiles in Europe. Today, little more than the hollowed-out radical rhetoric remains. With hardly any remaining opposition to Nato left in Europe, and the alliance’s creeping expansion beyond the Euro-Atlantic area, its hegemony is now nearly absolute. https://unherd.com/2023/05/how-nato-seduced-the-european-left/
The US Empire Isn’t A Government That Runs Nonstop Wars, It’s A Nonstop War That Runs A Government
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JUN 01, 2024,
It clears up a lot of confusion when you understand that the US empire is not a national government which happens to run nonstop military operations, it’s a nonstop military operation that happens to run a national government.
The wars are not designed to serve the interests of the United States, the United States is designed to serve the interests of the wars. The US as a country is just a source of funding, personnel, resources and diplomatic cover for a nonstop campaign to dominate the planet with mass military violence and the threat thereof.
This campaign is not waged to benefit the American people or their security, but to benefit the loose international alliance of plutocrats and unelected empire managers whose wealth and power are premised on the world order of continuous violence, exploitation and extraction which the campaign of global domination upholds. This campaign of global domination and its manifestations as a whole may be referred to as the US empire, which has very little in common with the US as an individual nation
Until you understand this, nothing the US government or the US war machine does will make sense. You won’t understand why military operations are being waged which don’t seem to benefit the American people in any way, and which if anything actually harm the national security interests of the United States. You won’t understand why US foreign policy remains the same no matter who’s in office, regardless of party or platform. You won’t understand why the US and its allies do crazy things that otherwise make no sense for governments to do, like backing an increasingly unpopular genocide in Gaza, starting a cold war with China, or tempting nuclear armageddon with Russia.
And the answer is that these aggressions are not happening because they benefit the US as a nation, or even because they serve the political agendas of any elected officials. The nonstop violence is a means to a completely different end, and is almost an end in and of itself — benefiting war profiteers, shoring up geostrategic control, and expanding the sphere of the US empire’s particular brand of global capitalism.
There’s the nonstop worldwide military operation, and then there’s the theatrical set pieces of an official government slapped together in the foreground which we’re all meant to pretend has something to do with all the wars and militarism we are seeing. In reality the war machine just does what it’s going to do while the official elected suits in Washington put on these performances where they argue about abortion and Donald Trump to make it look like the US has a real government that’s making real decisions.
It was decided long ago that war is too important to be left to the will of the electorate, so now there’s this fake dummy political system that the American people are given to play with so they won’t meddle with the gears of the imperial machine. The local inhabitants of the hub of the globe-spanning empire are kept too propagandized, entertained, distracted, busy, poor, and sick to have a truth-based relationship with what’s being done in their name around the world, and if they do make some space in their life to become politically engaged they are herded into a kayfabe two-party system where both factions support war, militarism, imperialism, plutocracy and ecocidal capitalism but put immense amounts of energy into empty culture warring over issues that nobody with any real power cares about.
Trying to talk about this to people who are still plugged into the mainstream imperial worldview is like if Amazon had a children’s cartoon show called Andy Amazon & Friends, and the public believed the cartoon show was Amazon — they didn’t know anything about the sprawling trillionaire megacorporation that’s devouring the global economy. You’d try to talk about the gargantuan e-commerce company and they’d think you were talking about the cartoon, and object that what you’re saying doesn’t line up with what they know about the show and its characters.
Once you see the corporation behind the cartoon, once you see the empire behind the performative puppet show of official politics, you see it everywhere. You see it in the movements of the imperial war machine. You see it in the news headlines. You see it in the phony justifications and narratives that are being spouted by the western political-media class. You see it in our education system. You see it throughout our vapid mainstream western culture of interminable diversion and capitalist indoctrination.
And you stop caring about the puppet show. You stop caring about presidential elections, about Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump, about the culture war wedge issue of the day and the latest hot topic that everyone’s saying you need to take a position on. It becomes as interesting to you as some Youtube video your kid has on in the background when you’re busy dealing with a home emergency.
And the behavior of the empire absolutely is an emergency. The escalations against Russia and China that these freaks are pushing have the world on a trajectory that’s going to get us all killed, and the horrors they are inflicting in Gaza and elsewhere are creating a nightmare on earth right here and now. The empire is only getting crazier and more violent as its planetary domination becomes more challenged, and until people can see it for what it really is, it’s going to be very hard to build up the necessary public opposition against it to use the power of our numbers to force them to stop.
Blinken Confirms Biden Change On Policy Toward Ukraine Using U.S. Weapons Inside Russia
Radio Free Europe, By Mike Eckel and Rikard Jozwiak 31 May 24
PRAGUE — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says President Joe Biden has given Ukraine the go-ahead to use U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia for the limited purpose of defending the eastern city of Kharkiv amid pleas from Ukraine to allow its forces to defend the country against attacks originating from Russian territory.
Speaking in Prague on May 31 at an informal meeting of NATO-member foreign ministers, Blinken said Ukraine had asked Washington for authorization to use U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia as it tries to defeat Russian troops that began a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“Over the past few weeks, Ukraine came to us and asked for the authorization to use weapons that we’re providing to defend against this aggression, including against Russian forces that are massing on the Russian side of the border and then attacking into Ukraine,” Blinken said.
nd that went right to the president, and as you’ve heard, he’s approved use of our weapons for that purpose. Going forward, we’ll continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is as necessary adapt and adjust,” Blinken said.
Blinken’s confirmation came after media reports quoting U.S. officials — including one who spoke to RFE/RL — that Biden has partially lifted the ban.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg had already added his backing to such a move saying during the Prague meeting that allies should consider lifting restrictions on the use of NATO weapons by Ukraine to hit targets on Russian territory.
The decision is a reversal of the U.S. refusal to let Ukraine use American weapons to hit targets inside Russia over fears that it would cause an escalation in the conflict.
Germany, for example, has expressed opposition to allowing the use of NATO-provided weapons to strike inside Russia, though a government spokesman on May 31 said it had also agreed that Kyiv could now use weapons supplied by Berlin to defend itself against strikes from positions just inside Russia………………………………………..
Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised a response, warning of “serious consequences,” especially for what he called “small countries” in Europe.
Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quoted Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the Russian parliament’s lower house Defense Committee as saying on May 31 that Biden’s decision would have no impact on Moscow’s military operations against Ukraine. https://www.rferl.org/a/us-biden-policy-ukraine-strikes-inside-russia/32974016.html
UK’s nuclear deterrent key to Starmer’s plans to keep Britain safe
Labour leader Keir Starmer will meet with forces veterans and a group of his party’s candidates when he campaigns in the North West of England on Monday
Independent, Richard Wheeler, 3 June 24
Sir Keir Starmer will pitch Labour as the “party of national security” as he seeks to switch attention to defence matters during the general election campaign.
The Labour leader is expected to meet with forces veterans and a group of his party’s candidates when he campaigns in the North West of England on Monday.
Sir Keir will reaffirm his commitment to a “nuclear deterrent triple lock” as well as his ambition to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of the size of the economy.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made clear he wants to meet the 2.5 per cent target by 2030 although Labour has so far declined to outline its timeline, only noting they would do so when economic conditions allow.
Labour says its nuclear deterrent triple lock involves: a commitment to construct the four new nuclear submarines in Barrow-in-Furness; maintaining Britain’s continuous at-sea deterrent; and the delivery of all future upgrades needed for the submarines to patrol the waters.
The Vanguard-class submarines are due to be replaced by the bigger Dreadnought-class submarines in the 2030s.
Between £31 billion and £41 billion has been set aside for the wider programme of replacing the Vanguard-class submarines, according to figures from the House of Commons Library.
Sir Keir has been attempting to shift perceptions of Labour’s defence stance following the party’s time under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, a long-standing critic of Nato and Trident………………………………..
” alongside our unshakeable commitment to Nato, an incoming Labour government will introduce a ‘triple lock’ commitment on our nuclear deterrent – providing vital protection for the UK and our Nato allies in the years ahead, as well as supporting thousands of high paying jobs across the UK.”
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said: “Twelve members of Starmer’s front bench team, including Angela Rayner and David Lammy, voted against Trident. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-keir-starmer-nuclear-deterrent-monday-b2555401.html
Labour pledges to launch Great British Energy ‘within months’ of general election victory: it includes nuclear power.
The Labour Party has unveiled more details on its plans to set up a
publicly owned energy company, Great British Energy, confirming its
intention to launch the firm as a priority should the Party win July’s
general election.
The Great British Energy website went live late on
Thursday night (30 May), providing more information on how the company
would work and the benefits it could bring in terms of lower energy bills,
new green jobs and future-proofing the UK.
Labour leader Kier Starmer has
stated that setting up Great British Energy would be one of his
government’s first steps after the election on 4 July. Great British
Energy would focus on energy generation in the first instance, the website
confirms. It would be backed with public funding from Labour’s
slimmed-down multi-billion-pound annual green investment coffers.
This funding would be raised through an enhanced windfall tax on North Sea oil
and gas operators, who already pay a 75% tax rate which would be hiked to
78% under a Labour Government. Labour wants to use Great British Energy
support both mature renewable and nuclear technologies, and emerging
technologies such as floating offshore wind, tidal and renewable hydrogen.
Regardless of a technology’s maturity, the aim will be to crowd in
private investment by offering the public funding and government expertise
needed to reduce risks for investors. Great British Energy would be based
in Scotland, and Labour has a vision to ensure that it supports energy
generation assets in all UK regions. It will partner with other
organisations to deliver at least 8GW of community renewables over the
course of the next Parliament.
Edie 31st May 2024
US Energy Secretary calls for more nuclear power while celebrating $35 billion Georgia reactors
AP News, BY JEFF AMY, June 3, 2024
WAYNESBORO, Ga. (AP) — U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Friday called for more nuclear reactors to be built in the United States and worldwide. But the CEO of the Georgia utility that just finished the first two scratch-built American reactors in a generation at a cost of nearly $35 billion says his company isn’t ready to pick up that baton.
Speaking in Waynesboro, Georgia, where Georgia Power Co. and three other utilities last month put a second new nuclear reactor into commercial operation, Granholm said the United States needs 98 more reactors with the capacity of units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle to produce electricity while reducing climate-changing carbon emissions. Each of the two new reactors can power 500,000 homes and businesses without releasing any carbon.
COMMENT. That’s if you don’t count radioactive emissions, and the huge carbon emissions from the entire nuclear fuel chain.
“It is now time for others to follow their lead to reach our goal of getting to net zero by 2050,” Granholm said. “We have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country.”
The federal government says it is easing the risks of nuclear construction, but the $11 billion in cost overruns at Plant Vogtle near Augusta remain sobering for other utilities. Chris Womack is the CEO of Southern Co., the Atlanta-based parent company of Georgia Power. He said he supports Granholm’s call for more nuclear-power generation, but he added that his company won’t build more soon………….
Friday’s event capped a week of celebrations, where leaders proclaimed the reactors a success, even though they finished seven years late…….
The new Vogtle reactors are currently projected to cost Georgia Power and three other owners $31 billion, according to calculations by The Associated Press. Add in $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid Vogtle owners to walk away from construction, and the total nears $35 billion.
Electric customers in Georgia already have paid billions for what may be the most expensive power plant ever. The federal government aided Vogtle by guaranteeing the repayment of $12 billion in loans, reducing borrowing costs…………..
The Biden administration promised that the military would commission reactors, which could help drive down costs for others. It also noted support for smaller reactors, suggesting small reactors could replace coal-fueled electric generating plants that are closing. The administration also pledged to further streamline licensing.
………………………… In Michigan, where Granholm was a Democratic governor, she announced in March up to $1.5 billion in loans to restart the Palisades nuclear power plant, which was shut down in 2022 after a previous owner had trouble producing electricity that was price-competitive.
But with much of the domestic effort focused on building a series of smaller nuclear reactors using mass-produced components, critics question whether they can actually be built more cheaply. Others note that the United States still hasn’t created a permanent repository for nuclear waste, which lasts for thousands of years. Other forms of electrical generation, including solar backed up with battery storage, are much cheaper to build initially.
…………….Regulators in December approved an additional 6% rate increase on Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers to pay for $7.56 billion in remaining costs at Vogtle, with the company absorbing $2.6 billion in costs. That is expected to cost the typical residential customer an additional $8.97 a month in May, on top of the $5.42 increase that took effect when Unit 3 began operating. https://apnews.com/article/georgia-nuclear-plant-energy-secretary-granholm-05a6e2444a8b5a9e9c7c61b111b87192
US doubtful it could help Korea on nuclear-powered subs
Korea Times 3 June 24
The United States is unlikely to help Korea build nuclear-powered submarines at the moment, as it is stretched by AUKUS commitments to Australia, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the Shangri-La security dialogue in Singapore.
In 2021 the United States signed the AUKUS pact with Britain and Australia to share nuclear-powered submarine technology and to sell at least three Virginia-class boats to Australia in the 2030s.
Several other allies, including Korea, have expressed interest in involvement.
Asked on Saturday at the security summit how he would respond to a direct Korean request for help obtaining nuclear submarines, Austin said it would be “very, very difficult” for Washington to accommodate that “on top of what we do right now.”
“(AUKUS) is no small endeavour,” he said. “We just started down this path with Australia. (It’s) highly doubtful that we could take on another initiative of this type anytime in the near future.”…………………….. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2024/06/113_375778.html
To continue the Gaza genocide, Israel and the US must destroy the laws of war
Israel presumably dared to defy the court only because it was sure it had the Biden administration’s backing.
Israel has sought to close down Palestinian legal and human rights groups by designating them as “terrorist organisations”.
Middle East Eye Jonathan Cook, 31 May 2024
The world’s two highest courts have made an implacable enemy of Israel in trying to uphold international law and end Israeli atrocities.
Separate announcements last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) should have forced Israel on to the back foot in Gaza.
A panel of judges at the ICJ – sometimes known as the World Court – demanded last Friday that Israel immediately stop its current offensive on Rafah, in southern Gaza.
Instead, Israel responded by intensifying its atrocities.
On Sunday, it bombed a supposedly “safe zone” crowded with refugee families forced to flee from the rest of Gaza, which has been devastated by Israel’s rampage for the past eight months.
The air strike set fire to an area crammed with tents, killing dozens of Palestinians, many of whom burnt alive. A video shows a man holding aloft a baby beheaded by the Israeli blast.
Hundreds more, many of them women and children, suffered serious injuries, including horrifying burns.
Israel has destroyed almost all of the medical facilities that could treat Rafah’s wounded, as well as denying entry to basic medical supplies such as painkillers that could ease their torment.
This was precisely the outcome US President Joe Biden warned of months ago when he suggested that an Israeli attack on Rafah would constitute a “red line”.
But the US red line evaporated the moment Israel crossed it. The best Biden’s officials could manage was a mealy-mouthed statement calling the images from Rafah “heart-breaking”.
Such images were soon to be repeated, however. Israel attacked the same area again on Tuesday, killing at least 21 Palestinians, mostly women and children, as its tanks entered the centre of Rafah.
‘A mechanism with teeth’
The World Court’s demand that Israel halt its attack on Rafah came in the wake of its decision in January to put Israel effectively on trial for genocide, a judicial process that could take years to complete.
In the meantime, the ICJ insisted, Israel had to refrain from any actions that risked a genocide of Palestinians. In last week’s ruling, the court strongly implied that the current attack on Rafah might advance just such an agenda.
Israel presumably dared to defy the court only because it was sure it had the Biden administration’s backing.
UN officials, admitting that they had run out of negatives to describe the ever-worsening catastrophe in Gaza, called it “hell on earth”.
Days before the ICJ’s ruling, the wheels of its sister court, the ICC, finally began to turn.
Karim Khan, its chief prosecutor, announced last week that he would be seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders.
Both Israeli leaders are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including attempts to exterminate the population of Gaza through planned starvation.
Israel has been blocking aid deliveries for many months, creating famine, a situation only exacerbated by its recent seizure of a crossing between Egypt and Rafah through which aid was being delivered.
The ICC is a potentially more dangerous judicial mechanism for Israel than the ICJ.
The World Court is likely to take years to reach a judgement on whether Israel has definitively committed a genocide in Gaza – possibly too late to save much of its population.
The ICC, on the other hand, could potentially issue arrest warrants within days or weeks.
And while the World Court has no real enforcement mechanisms, given that the US is certain to veto any UN Security Council resolution seeking to hold Israel to account, an ICC ruling would place an obligation on more than 120 states that have ratified its founding document, the Rome Statute, to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant should either step on their soil.
That would make Europe and much of the world – though not the US – off-limits to both.
And there is no reason for Israeli officials to assume that the ICC’s investigations will finish with Netanyahu and Gallant. Over time, it could issue warrants for many more Israeli officials.
As one Israeli official has noted, “the ICC is a mechanism with teeth”.
‘Antisemitic’ court
For that reason, Israel responded by going on the warpath, accusing the court of being “antisemitic” and threatening to harm its officials.
Washington appeared ready to add its muscle too.
Asked at a Senate committee hearing whether he would support a Republican proposal to impose sanctions on the ICC, Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, replied: “We want to work with you on a bipartisan basis to find an appropriate response.”
Administration officials, speaking to the Financial Times, suggested the measures under consideration “would target prosecutor Karim Khan and others involved in the investigation”.
US reprisals, according to the paper, would most likely be modelled on the sanctions imposed in 2020 by Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s predecessor, after the ICC threatened to investigate both Israel and the US over war crimes, in the occupied Palestinian territories and Afghanistan respectively.
Then, the Trump administration accused the ICC of “financial corruption and malfeasance at the highest levels” – allegations it never substantiated.
Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor at the time, was denied entry to the US, and Trump officials threatened to confiscate her and the ICC judges’ assets and put them on trial. The administration also vowed to use force to liberate any Americans or Israelis who were arrested.
Mike Pompeo, the then US secretary of state, averred that Washington was “determined to prevent having Americans and our friends and allies in Israel and elsewhere hauled in by this corrupt ICC”.
Covert war on ICC
In fact, a joint investigation by the Israeli website 972 and the British Guardian newspaper revealed this week that Israel – apparently with US support – has been running a covert war against the ICC for the best part of a decade.
Its offensive began after Palestine became a contracting party to the ICC in 2015, and intensified after Bensouda, Khan’s predecessor, started a preliminary investigation into Israeli war crimes – both Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza and its building of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their lands.
Bensouda found herself and her family threatened, and her husband blackmailed. The head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Yossi Cohen, became personally involved in the campaign of intimidation. An official briefed on Cohen’s behaviour likened it to “stalking”. The Mossad chief ambushed Bensouda on at least one occasion in an attempt to recruit her to Israel’s side.
Cohen, who is known to be close to Netanyahu, reportedly told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”
Israel has also been running a sophisticated spying operation on the court, hacking its database to read emails and documents. It has tried to recruit ICC staff to spy on the court from within. There are suspicions at the ICC that Israel has been successful.
Because Israel oversees access to the occupied territories, it has been able to ban ICC officials from investigating its war crimes directly. That has meant, given its control of the telecommunications systems in the territories, that it has been able to monitor all conversations between the ICC and Palestinians reporting atrocities.
As a result, Israel has sought to close down Palestinian legal and human rights groups by designating them as “terrorist organisations”.
The surveillance of the ICC has continued during Khan’s tenure – and it is the reason Israel knew the arrest warrants were coming. According to sources that spoke to the Guardian and 972 website, the court came under “tremendous pressure from the United States” not to proceed with the warrants.
Khan has pointed out that interference in the court’s activities is a criminal offence. More publicly, a group of senior US Republican senators sent a threatening letter to Khan: “Target Israel and we will target you.”
Khan himself has noted that he has faced a campaign of intimidation and has warned that, if the interference continues, “my office will not hesitate to act”.
The question is how much of this is bravado, and how much is it affecting Khan and the ICC’s judges, making them wary of pursuing their investigation, expediting it or expanding it to more Israeli war crimes suspects.
Legal noose
Despite the intimidation, the legal noose is quickly tightening around Israel’s neck. It has become impossible for the world’s highest judicial authorities to ignore Israel’s eight-month slaughter in Gaza and near-complete destruction of its infrastructure, from schools and hospitals to aid compounds and bakeries.
Many tens of thousands of Palestinian children have been killed, maimed and orphaned in the rampage, and hundreds of thousands more are being gradually starved to death by Israel’s aid blockade.
The role of the World Court and the War Crimes Court are precisely to halt atrocities and genocides before it is too late.
There is an obligation on the world’s most powerful states – especially the world’s superpower-in-chief, the United States, which so often claims the status of “global policeman” – to help enforce such rulings.
Should Israel continue to ignore the ICJ’s demand that it end its attack on Rafah, as seems certain, the UN Security Council would be expected to pass a resolution to enforce the decision.
That could range from, at a minimum, an arms embargo and economic sanctions on Israel to imposing no-fly zones over Gaza or even sending in a UN peacekeeping force.
Washington has shown it can act when it wishes to. Even though the US is one of a minority of states not a party to the Rome Statute, it has vigorously supported the arrest warrant issued by the ICC against Russian leader Vladimir Putin in 2023…………………………………………………
Divisions in Europe
It is not just that the US is missing in action as Israel advances its genocidal goals in Gaza. Washington is actively aiding and abetting the genocide, by supplying Israel with bombs, by cutting funding to UN aid agencies that are the main lifeline for Gaza’s population, by sharing intelligence with Israel and by refusing to use its plentiful leverage over Israel to stop the slaughter.
And the widespread assumption is that the US will veto any Security Council resolution against Israel.
According to two former ICC officials who spoke to the Guardian and 972 website, senior Israeli officials have expressly stated that Israel and the US are working together to stymie the court’s work.
Washington’s contempt for the world’s highest judicial authorities is so flagrant that it is even starting to fray relations with Europe.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has thrown his weight behind the ICC and called for any ruling against Netanyahu and Gallant to be respected.
Meanwhile, on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his outrage over Israel’s attacks on Rafah and called for them to stop immediately.
Three European states – Spain, Ireland and Norway – announced last week that they were joining more than 140 other countries, including eight from the 27-member European Union, in recognising Palestine as a state.
The coordination between Spain, Ireland and Norway was presumably designed to attenuate the inevitable backlash provoked by defying Washington’s wishes.
Among the falsehoods promoted by the US and Israel is the claim that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel’s military actions in Gaza because neither of them have recognised Palestine as a state.
But Palestine became a state party to the ICC way back in 2015. And, as Spain, Ireland and Norway have highlighted, it is now recognised even by western states usually submissive to the US-imposed “rules-based order”.
Another deception promoted by Israel and the US – a more revealing one – is the claim that the ICC lacks jurisdiction because Israel, like the US, has not ratified the Rome Statute. ……………………..
Might makes right
Both the ICJ and the ICC are fully aware of the dangers of taking on Israel – which is why, despite the dissembling complaints from the US and Israel, each court is treading so slowly and cautiously in dealing with Israeli atrocities.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Taking on Goliath
In making the case against Israel, Khan clearly knew he was taking on a Goliath, given Israel’s stalwart backing from the US. He had even recruited a panel of legal experts to give its blessing, in the hope that might offer some protection from reprisal.
The panel, which unanimously endorsed the indictments against Israel and Hamas, included legal experts like Amal Clooney, the nearest the human rights community has to a legal superstar. But it also included Theodor Meron, a former legal authority in the Israeli government’s foreign ministry.
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, explaining his reasoning, Khan seemed keen to preempt the coming attacks. He noted that an unnamed senior US politician had already tried to deter him from indicting Israeli leaders. The prosecutor suggested that other threats were being made behind the scenes. ………………………………………………….
The ICC prosecutor made clear that he understands all too well what is at stake if the ICC and ICJ turn a blind eye to the Gaza genocide, as Israel and the US want. He told Amanpour: “If we don’t apply the law equally, we’re going to disintegrate as a species.”
The uncomfortable truth is that such disintegration, in a nuclear age, may be further advanced than any of us cares to acknowledge.
The US and its favourite client state give no sign of being willing to submit to international law. Like Samson, they would prefer to bring the house down than respect the long-established rules of war.
The initial victims are the people of Gaza. But in a world without laws, where might alone makes right, all of us will ultimately be the losers. https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-genocide-continue-israel-us-must-destroy-laws-war?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 237: As Israel’s invasion of Rafah and northern Gaza continues, Smotrich calls for ‘war’ on West Bank
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for launching a “defensive war” on the West Bank in the same way that Israel has done in Gaza.
BY QASSAM MUADDI , https://mondoweiss.net/2024/05/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-237-as-israels-invasion-of-rafah-and-northern-gaza-continues-smotrich-calls-for-war-on-west-bank/
Casualties
- 36,224 + killed* and at least 81,777 wounded in the Gaza Strip.*
- 520+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
- Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
- 636 Israeli soldiers have been announced killed since October 7, and at least 3,568 have been announced as wounded.***
*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel on May 26, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of Health on May 26, this is the latest figure.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded, according to Israeli media reports, exceeds 6,800 as of April 1.
Key Developments
CNN investigation shows that Israeli bombs used in the Rafah tent-city massacre last Sunday, May 26, were U.S.-made Boeing bombs.
Israel kills 240 Palestinians, wounds 1,134 since Monday, May 27, across Gaza, raising the death toll since October 7 to 36,240 and the number of wounded to 81,777, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Israeli strikes target Palestinians trying to return to their homes in Jabalia.
UNRWA chief says Israel has made targeting international missions look legitimate.- Israeli forces raid Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, Tubas, northern Hebron, and Qalqilya in the West Bank, arresting 20 in the past 24 hours.
- Israeli forces cause large fire in main vegetable market in Ramallah.
- Two Israeli soldiers reported killed in car-ramming attack north of Nablus.
- Israel uses drone strikes during raid on Nablus last night.
- Israel’s finance minister Smotrich calls for “defensive war” in the West Bank.
- PLO says Israeli actions in northern West Bank refugee camps “same as in Gaza.”
Israeli forces partially withdraw from Jabalia.
Israel kills 240 across Gaza since Monday
The Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry announced that the remaining hospitals in the Gaza Strip received 240 slain Palestinians in Israeli airstrikes since Monday, May 27, while 1134 others arrived wounded.
Meanwhile, local media sources reported that in the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes killed seven Palestinians in strikes on a shelter for displaced families in Gaza City. Reports also indicated that Israeli troops detonated several houses in the Sheikh Zayed neighborhood in the city.
Israeli forces also targeted the areas of Beit Lahia, Zeitoun, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia with drone strikes and shelling. Israeli ground troops partially withdrew from Jabalia after a several-week-long invasion.
Residents found large destruction to infrastructure in Jabalia following the partial Israeli withdrawal. Other families who had fled the area at the beginning of the Israeli invasion in mid-May attempted to return to their homes in Jabalia, but Israeli troops opened fire at them, according to reports.
In the central Gaza Strip, heavy combat was reported between Israeli forces and Palestinian resistance fighters in the east of the central governorate. Meanwhile, Israeli forces opened machine gun fire on residents’ homes in the Bureij refugee camp. Israeli fire also targeted houses in the Wadi Gaza area and in the Mighraqa village, north of Deir al-Balah.
In the Nuseirat refugee camp, Israeli forces fired flares last night, while four Palestinians were killed in an air strike on a family house in the camp.
Smotrich calls for ‘war’ in West Bank as Israel ramps up raids
Since Wednesday night, Israeli forces raided the cities of Tulkarem, Nablus, Ramallah, Tubas, and the Arroub refugee camp north of Hebron, arresting at least 20 Palestinians according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
Last week, an Israeli raid on Jenin killed 12 Palestinians, while largely destroying the camp’s infrastructure. The current raid pattern has been increasing in frequency and violence, especially in the northern West Bank refugee camps — notably in Tulkarem, Jenin, and Nablus.
On Wednesday, the Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who handles the administrative powers over the occupied West Bank, called upon the Israeli army to conduct a “defensive war” in the West Bank, similar to the one in Gaza. Smotrich has called in the past to wipe out Palestinian towns, arguing that it should be the Israeli army, not the settlers, to carry out such actions.
Also on Wednesday, the member of the PLO’s department for refugee camps responsible for the northern West Bank, Nancy Thouqan, told the Palestine News Network that what Israel is doing in the northern West Bank is already similar to what it is doing in Gaza.
Thouqan pointed out that the northern camps house the largest number of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, and have been the center of Palestinian activism in recent years. According to Thouqan, Israel aims at depopulating these camps, similarly to its attempts to depopulate the Gaza Strip, and to undermine the work of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
On Wednesday, UNRWA’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said that Israel’s smearing of the agency led some to believe that UN missions are legitimate targets. Lazzarini added that the size of Israeli attacks on UNRWA staff in the current war “deserve an investigation.” Since October, Israeli forces have killed 188 UNRWA employees, according to the agency’s own data as of May 7.
Call for next UK government to make ‘big decisions’ on nuclear power projects
The manifesto also pressed for the building of a fleet of Small Modular Reactors.
Independent, Alan Jones, 1 June 24
The next government is being urged to make “big decisions” on nuclear power projects to help deliver jobs and energy security.
The Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) has published its manifesto, saying it was important to ensure continued momentum.
The association called for measures including pressing ahead with the planned Sizewell C power station, as well as extending the life of current power stations.
The manifesto also pressed for the building of a fleet of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) across the country and a third large-scale station at Wylfa on Anglesey in north Wales.
Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the NIA, said: “Big decisions on new nuclear projects are needed as a matter of urgency during the next parliament……………………………….. https://www.independent.co.uk/business/call-for-next-government-to-make-big-decisions-on-nuclear-power-projects-b2554453.htm
On the Brink: The NATO-Russia Ukrainian War Comes to Europe
Russian and Eurasian Politics, by GORDONHAHN, June 2, 2024
The NATO-Russia Ukrainian for, the war for and against NATO expansion, is on the brink of expanding to the NATO countries that provoked Russia to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2024 and have supported its continuation ever since, save one—the United States of America—ironically, the real force behind the war’s genesis. Sixteen years ago today’s CIA Director, at the time US Ambassador to Moscow, William Burns was ignored when he informed Washington:
“Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. ….“Russia’s opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is both emotional and based on perceived strategic concerns about the impact on Russia’s interests in the region. It is also politically popular to paint the U.S. and NATO as Russia’s adversaries and to use NATO’s outreach to Ukraine and Georgia as a means of generating support from Russian nationalists. While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990’s was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests” (https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html).
Rather than heed Burns’s warning and that of numerous objective experts, the US and NATO tried to remake Ukraine, funding anti-Russian forces and backing what became a violent, terrorist coup led by neofascists in February 2013, confounding an agreement worked out by regime, opposition, Europe, and Russia that would have resolved the crisis.
The post-coup NATO involvement in Ukraine was discussed in unusual pieces. One had purposes beyond the present discussion, The New York Times (NYT), acknowledged that the CIA was involved in Maidan Ukraine no later than immediately after the coup (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html).
In one rare objective opinion published in NYT on the subject, it was noted: “Over the next decade, the US and its allies built a powerful Ukrainian army while sabotaging the Minsk agreement and later (after the Russian invasion) also sabotaged the Istanbul negotiations. Weapon systems poured in, Ukrainian ports were modernised to fit American warships, and Ukraine was becoming a de facto NATO member. Top Ukrainian officials like Arestovich argued openly they were preparing for a war with Russia. A top adviser to former president Nicolas Sarkozy, warned that the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership of November 2021 convinced Russia that it must attack or be attacked’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/opinion/us-ukraine-putin-war.html).
The decision to supply nuclear capable F-16 fighter jets to Kiev and the recent French and presumably other Western countries’ coming declarations making official their previous and future deployments of ‘instructors’ and ‘advisors’ to the Ukrainian front is dangerously escalatory enough. Moscow is required to respond with an answering escalation to save face internally before the Russian people and externally before the world. Now NATO, in the person of its GenSec, has opened up the Overton window by way of convening discussions with member-states on the introduction of troops and the use of Western-supplied mid-range rockets to hit deep inside Russian territory.
Poland is on the verge of deploying its missile defense systems to protect Ukraine from Russia attacks. Moreover, a claim is being circulated to the effect that decision of 12 NATO countries (UK, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania so far) to allow Kiev to use Western missiles to strike deep into Russia — as far as Moscow and Russia’s ‘second capitol’ of St. Petersburg. Germany, not included in the list, has apparently changed its position and now supports attacks on Russia using Western weapons, as Chancellor Olaf Shultz stated standing next to French President Emmanuel Macron last week. Berlin also is still considering sending long-range Taurus missiles to Kiev.
For its part, the US is considering giving permission to Kiev to use US weapons, such as ATACM missiles (180-mile range), against military targets deep inside Russia (https://www.wsj.com/world/blinken-signals-u-s-may-allow-ukraine-to-strike-inside-russia-with-u-s-weapons-61fedb10). The US has announced that it will allow the use of weapons it has supplied to Ukraine for attacks on Russian proper in the battle in the Kharkov (Kharkiv) border region now the focus of a Russian counteroffensive.
Otherwise, for the moment Washington will continue to pretend it is opposed to Ukraine’s use of American weapons against Russia proper, using official statements and media plants to this tune: “a U.S. official said Washington had expressed concerns to Kyiv over Ukraine’s strikes — using its own weapons — on Russian radar stations that provide conventional air defense and early warning of nuclear launches by the West.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/30/ukraine-us-strategy-disagreement-corruption/).
Ukraine’s armed forces could not have made this attack without US assistance. The US also will soon conclude a US-Ukraine Security Pact likely intended to institutionalize US weapons, training, intelligence, operational, and financial support to Kiev for the ‘long war.’ Fifteen European states have already concluded such long-term security agreements with Kiev over the last few months (https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2024/05/31/7458547/).
All this —added to the Western weapons, intelligence, training, operational planning, and undercover military personnel contributed to Kiev — makes Ukraine de facto a full-fledged NATO member-state. In other words, NATO countries — and thus de facto NATO itself — are preparing to do officially what they have been doing clandestinely since February 2022: fight Russia in Ukraine for the right to expand NATO when and where Washington and Brussels want. Before all this, Western countries — all the leading members of NATO — were de facto and de jure co-belligerents with Ukraine against Russia. Suffice it to note that Ukraine does not have space based reconnaissance data for targeting but is receiving such from French, German, US and other NATO militaries.
It appears that the recent Western escalations are driven in part by the need to prevent a Russian victory at all costs in order to save face for the US and NATO and, perhaps no less importantly, to salvage US President Joe Biden’s career in the coming presidential elections—a career that has been so disastrous for his family, Americans in general, and now the world. ………………………………………………
………………….. A kind of perfect storm is coming. This autumn there likely will be: the collapse of the Ukrainian front and/or army and/or regime; the Russian army’s approach to the Dniepr and perhaps encirclement of Zaporozhe, Kharkiv, even Kiev; and an American political crisis (given the guilty verdict against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump). The possibilities are almost endless, and some rather dire ones are becoming increasingly more probable.https://gordonhahn.com/2024/06/02/on-the-brink-the-nato-russia-ukrainian-war-comes-to-europe/
Plutonium found in Indiana Street air filters near Rocky Flats; Boulder Commissioners reconsider trail project
High winds carry plutonium-laden dirt from former weapons plant to filters on Indiana Street, experts say
ARVADA PRESS, by Rylee Dunn, May 30, 2024
A recent discovery of plutonium in air filters on Indiana Street near Rocky Flats has given Boulder County Commissioners pause as they appear to reconsider involvement in the Rocky Mountain Greenway Project trail system.
The Greenway project began in 2016 as an effort to connect three National Wildlife Refuges — Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Two Ponds and Rocky Flats — through an interconnected trail system.
The project calls for the installation of an underpass connecting Rocky Flats to Boulder Open Space through the Rock Creek Corridor and an overpass to connect Westminster trails to the Greenway.
When gale-force winds hit on April 6, chemist and DU Professor Michael Ketterer and retired FBI agent Jon Lipsky — who led the 1989 raid of Rocky Flats that eventually led to the plant being shut down and designated as an EPA Superfund site — set up air filters in three locations nearby to conduct a study on the contaminated soil’s activities in high winds.
Ketterer said he has taken air filter samples near Rocky Flats a handful of times, but that the high wind event of April 6 drew special interest because dirt was visibly moving in the air.
“We both observed large, rapidly moving suspended dust clouds extending from ground level up to heights of hundreds of feet, originating from areas on the (Central Operating Unit of Rocky Flats) and/or contaminated buffer zone,” Ketterer said in an affidavit written after collecting the samples.
Two samples were collected along Indiana Street while high winds were blowing from the west. Ketterer sent the samples to the radiochemistry lab at Northern Arizona University, where scientists used mass spectronomy to study the filters.
“Plutonium was unequivocally detected in the two Indiana Street air filters,” a statement from Ketterer said. “With less than 30 minutes sample collection time, quantities ranging from 47 to 128 milligrams of filter ash were recovered from air filters; plutonium was detected in all six of the individual preparations of ash from the two Indiana Street samples.”
The concern surrounding Ketterer’s findings, he says, is that if the Greenway is constructed, increased foot traffic will spread the contaminated soil to neighboring communities.
“The more that people walk on the refuge, and the more land use that is taking place… undisturbed soil is pretty well protected against wind erosion, but once people and animals start walking on the development, then the erodibility, if you will, of the soil surface is going to greatly increase,” Ketterer said.
He added that this could mean more contaminated soil being transported off the refuge toward neighboring properties.
Radioactive plutonium is a material that is produced by nuclear reactors, and has been known to cause lung, bone and liver cancer in people exposed to it, according to the CDC.
The two isotopes of plutonium Ketterer found near Rocky Flats are 239 and 240, which have a “fingerprint” that confirms they originated at the former nuclear weapons plant.
Now, Ketterer’s findings are giving some governmental agencies pause about the construction of the Greenway Project, which calls for the Federal Highway Administration to install the underpass and overpass.
At an April 4 Boulder County Commissioners meeting, Lipsky warned county leaders of the dangers of building such structures on the site, referencing the Colorado State construction standard that forbids building when more than 0.9 picocuries per gram are found in soil.
Ketterer’s recent samples ranged from 0.15 to 1.19 picocuries of plutonium per gram of soil.
“I have a couple concerns: there is going to be digging, and the standard at Rocky Flats changes dramatically, exponentially, when it goes below three feet,” Lipsky said. “If it goes below six feet, there is no standard, and there’s no consideration for the workers, no consideration for the residents, like Superior, that will be receiving contaminants from this digging.”
Ketterer also gave comment at the April 4 meeting and did not mince words in his caution to commissioners.
“Commissioners, it’s not a marvelous idea to dig up and disturb plutonium-contaminated soils,” Ketterer said. “It’s all very unsettling to me. Not only do the soils near Rocky Flats and the Indiana Street corridor have plutonium in them, but a lot of it is in these discreet particles… I think this whole area is generously sprinkled with that.
“Commissioners,” Ketterer continued, “Rocky Flats is just one of the unsettling places in the U.S. and the world that we should worry about plutonium at — there’s a whole mess of uncontained plutonium at the central operating unit (of Rocky Flats) buried under… and we’re seeing a few breadcrumbs on the surface.”
………………………………………………………. legal action was brought in January when the advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility Colorado filed a lawsuit that seeks to block construction of trails in and around Rocky Flats. That litigation is ongoing as of press time…………………………………. https://coloradocommunitymedia.com/2024/05/30/plutonium-found-in-indiana-street-air-filters-near-rocky-flats-boulder-commissioners-reconsider-trail-project/
Presidents Who Gamble With Nuclear Armageddon
Each of the last five presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have brought us closer to the brink. We desperately need leaders with a knack for peace who can steer the nation, and the world, toward a more secure and less dangerous future.
JEFFREY D. SACHS, May 29, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/nuclear-armageddon
The overriding job of any U.S. president is to keep the nation safe. In the nuclear age, that mainly means avoiding nuclear Armageddon. Joe Biden’s reckless and incompetent foreign policy is pushing us closer to annihilation. He joins a long and undistinguished list of presidents who have gambled with Armageddon, including his immediate predecessor and rival, Donald Trump.
Talk of nuclear war is currently everywhere. Leaders of NATO countries call for Russia’s defeat and even dismemberment, while telling us not to worry about Russia’s 6,000 nuclear warheads. Ukraine uses NATO-supplied missiles to knock out parts of Russia’s nuclear-attack early-warning system inside Russia. Russia, in the meantime, engages in nuclear drills near its border with Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg give the green light to Ukraine to use NATO weapons to hit Russian territory as an increasingly desperate and extremist Ukrainian regime sees fit.
These leaders neglect at our greatest peril the most basic lesson of the nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis, as told by President John F. Kennedy, one of the few American presidents in the nuclear age to take our survival seriously. In the aftermath of the crisis, Kennedy told us, and his successors:
Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.
Yet this is exactly what Biden is doing today, carrying out a bankrupt and reckless policy.
Nuclear war can easily arise from an escalation of non-nuclear war, or by a hothead leader with access to nuclear arms deciding on a surprise first strike, or by a gross miscalculation. The last of these nearly occurred even after Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev had negotiated an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when a disabled Soviet submarine came within a hair’s breadth of launching a nuclear-tipped torpedo.
The Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to office, but just 9 minutes when he left it. Bush pushed the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to a mere 100 seconds. Now Biden has taken the clock to 90 seconds.
Most presidents, and most Americans, have little idea how close to the abyss we are. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which was founded in 1947 in part to help the world avoid nuclear annihilation, established the Doomsday Clock to help the public understand the gravity of the risks we face. National security experts adjust the clock depending how far or how close we are to “midnight,” meaning extinction. They put the clock today at just 90 seconds to midnight, the closest that it’s ever been in the nuclear age.
The clock is a useful measure of which presidents have “gotten it” and which have not. The sad fact is that most presidents have recklessly gambled with our survival in the name of national honor, or to prove their personal toughness, or to avoid political attacks from the warmongers, or as the result of sheer incompetence. By a simple and straightforward count, five presidents have gotten it right, moving the clock away from midnight, while nine have moved us closer to Armageddon, including the most recent five.
Truman was president when the Doomsday Clock was unveiled in 1947, at 7 minutes to midnight. Truman stoked the nuclear arms race and left office with the clock at just 3 minutes to midnight. Eisenhower continued the nuclear arms race but also entered into the first-ever negotiations with the Soviet Union regarding nuclear disarmament. By the time he left office, the clock was put back to 7 minutes to midnight.
Kennedy saved the world by coolly reasoning his way through the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than following the advice of hothead advisors who called for war (for a detailed account, see Martin Sherwin’s magisterial Gambling with Armageddon, 2020). He then negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev in 1963. By the time of his death, which may well have been a government coup resulting from Kennedy’s peace initiative, JFK had pushed the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight, a magnificent and historic achievement.
It was not to last. Lyndon Johnson soon escalated in Vietnam and pushed the clock back again to just 7 minutes to midnight. Richard Nixon eased tensions with both the Soviet Union and China, and concluded the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), pushing the clock again to 12 minutes from midnight. Yet Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter failed to secure SALT II, and Carter fatefully and unwisely gave a green light to the CIA in 1979 to destabilize Afghanistan. By the time Ronald Reagan took office, the clock was at just 4 minutes to midnight.
The next 12 years marked the end of the Cold War. Much of the credit is due to Mikhail Gorbachev, who aimed to reform the Soviet Union politically and economically, and to end the confrontation with the West. Yet credit is also due to Reagan and his successor George Bush, Sr., who successfully worked with Gorbachev to end the Cold War, which in turn was followed by the end of the Soviet Union itself in December 1991. By the time Bush left office, the Doomsday clock was at 17 minutes to midnight, the safest since the start of the nuclear age.
Sadly, the U.S. security establishment could not take “Yes” for an answer when Russia said an emphatic yes to peaceful and cooperative relations. The U.S. needed to “win” the Cold War, not just end it. It needed to declare itself and prove itself to be the sole superpower of the world, the one that would unilaterally write the rules of a new U.S.-led “rules-based order.” The post-1992 U.S. therefore launched wars and expanded its vast network of military bases as it saw fit, steadfastly and ostentatiously ignoring the red lines of other nations, indeed aiming to drive nuclear adversaries into humiliating retreats.
Since 1992, every president has left the U.S. and the world closer to nuclear annihilation than his predecessor. The Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to office, but just 9 minutes when he left it. Bush pushed the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to a mere 100 seconds. Now Biden has taken the clock to 90 seconds.
Biden has led the U.S. into three fulminant crises, any one of which could end up in Armageddon. By insisting on NATO enlargement to Ukraine, against Russia’s bright red line, Biden has repeatedly pushed for Russia’s humiliating retreat. By siding with a genocidal Israel, he has stoked a new Middle East arms race and a dangerously expanding Middle East conflict. By taunting China over Taiwan, which the U.S. ostensibly recognizes as part of one China, he is inviting a war with China.
Trump similarly stirred the nuclear pot on several fronts, most flagrantly with China and Iran.Washington seems of a single mind these days: more funding for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, more armaments for Taiwan. We slouch ever closer to Armageddon. Polls show the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of U.S. foreign policy, but their opinion counts for very little. We need to shout for peace from every hilltop. The survival of our children and grandchildren depends on it.
1 This Month
Tell Congress: Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe in Iran
Tell Congress: Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe in Iran
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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